Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Guild Philosophy

I joined another raiding guild in the end. This guild is less hardcore than my previous guild, and I find it suits me a bit better. For one thing they let the paladins melee in Molten Core!

(Honestly, I think the leadership is new to raiding in general, and don't realize that most guilds believe paladins are supposed to stay at the back. And we paladins are not enlightening them. :) )

Getting to melee makes Molten Core so much more fun! I find healing and cleansing can easily be done from the front lines. There are times when it's better to stay back (for example, when I need to help keep the main tank up), but the guild leaves the choice up to the individual paladin. This is actually quite liberating. I find that having the option to melee makes the game more fun, even if I choose not to take it.

Now, I'm not sure that paladins meleeing is the absolute optimal strategy. We are only on Gehennas. However, we have problems getting more than 30 people in the raid, and we did take down Magmadar for the first time with only 33 people. That seems like a pretty good accomplishment, so I'm willing to reserve judgement. And I'm having a lot more fun, so that has to count for something.

In all honesty, I think a lot of the problems at the raid level, from loot issues to class behaviour stem from the arrogance of some raiders. A lot of them believe that they know how to play your character better than you do. That's why they impose restrictions on you and on themselves. They do not trust you to make the correct decisions for your character, and so they try to make the decisions for you.

A good guild, in my opinion, needs to adopt the view that: The person who can best play your character is you. In the end, it all comes down to trust. If you trust that your people know how to play, you trust that they will only take loot they will use well.

There's a quote I've always liked. It's possibly a bit extreme for something as mundane as guilds in an MMO, but for what it's worth:

5 comments:

I really enjoy this blog ^^! I am a paladin myself on my way to 60. I guess thats a euphemism for saying i am level 30 ^^;; but in any case. Are guilds like that rather rare? How often are Paladins pigeonholed into one aspect of things Or forced to take only certain loot?

I do think its crazy that someone could have really high DKP and still not bid on an item they could use. I mean doesn't DKP in a sense represent dedication to a guild?

As the more you have the more raids one must of gone on,the more items one passed on.

Pre 1.9 you found alot of Paladin's Pidgeonholed simply because 60 paladins were a dime a dozen. After the patch we can be much more selective in guild choices. I left my guild fairly recently and have been looking around. One guild invited me to speak with thier officers. Up front they informed me that they don't allow Paladins to roll on two handers.

I asked them how many paladins they lost to the server transfer and they said "all of them". I wasn't trying to be a jerk but I asked them what they could offer me, in essence why I would want to join them. They pointed out that I could get great healing gear. I pointed out that I only need one more tier 1 piece (LB Chest, useing the freethinker chest right now) and I had great healing gear already.

I pointed out that there were only four MC pieces left I was looking for. One is the Sulfras, one is the mageblade, one is the LB chest and last one is Malistar's defender. Of the three, the Malistars is the lowest priority for me. I want it so I can stop using a shield that looks like a kite. It's not really an "upgrade".

I listened to them for the better part of an hour but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't bring anything to the table to make me want to go with them. So I'm not going to.

I can't speak as someone who's got a 60 Paladin (my highest is 42 currently), but I've already seen problems that Paladins face in regards to getting gear. Most of the problems I ran into were in SM; if it wasn't warriors getting uppity that I wanted to roll on Herod's Shoulder or the Raging Berserker Helm it was hunters saying that they could use that stuff in a few levels. I've still been unable to get into a PuG where I was "allowed" to roll on the Triune Amulet.

Considering these are PuG's and I don't particularly like arguing with people, I take it with a grain of salt. I'm kinda worried to hear that this happens with guilds too at 60...

It's good to hear that you've stood up for yourself and moved on though, even if the new guild is a bit of a step back in terms of raiding progress. Love reading the blog, all the best!

I got really lucky around level 30. I started running with the same group for most things. As such I didn't have to PUG very much till my 60's. But I've had to put up with people who pst with "helpful" comments like "You know that mages can use that cloak better..." On a cloak with +int. Not spell crit, not + damage and healing but just +int.

The arguement I've always used is that item x "will let me be a better healer/keep the MT alive/etc which generates alot more DPS then the 1% gain you get from it".

As to if this is common in endgame, yes unfortunately, it is. It's part of the penalty for playing a character that is not the "best" at any one thing.

It doesn't just happen to us. Feral druids tend to get put behind rogues, and priests are often denied +dmg/heal (that they may want for pvp or soloing).

It also comes from forcing people into specific roles. If paladins never melee, why would they need a 2H damage weapon. "For the good of the raid" is a phrase often invoked to justify these practices.

Actually, I wonder if there's a liberal capitalist argument against that. The Invisible Hand, that an individual acting for his own good tends also to promote the good of his community, a la Adam Smith. Hmm, I'll have to think about this.